As of 1:35 pm EST/10:35 am PST:
At this point, there has been no substantial movement in the election results for the past several hours — just a few tweaks here and there as the last precincts report in. There may be more changes as absentee and provisional ballots are counted over the next few hours and perhaps days. We will continue to update these figures periodically in other posts, and put this particular marathon “live blog” to an end for now.

As of 1:20 pm EST/10:20 am PST:
Just a few minor tweaks to the Arkansas and Florida counts. No change on Arizona or California. The No on Prop 8 campaign called a hastily organized press tele-conference refusing to concede, saying that 3 million to 4 million ballots remain uncounted statewide.

As of 2:15 am EST/11:15 pm PST:
I’m afraid this will have to be my last update for the night. My partner has rolled over and turned off the light, and our two dogs are staring at me with that look that says, “aren’t you done yet?” And there’s the fact that I still have to get up early in the morning for my real job.

So here is where things stand right now. We’ll pick it up in the morning. Feel free to add your updates in the comments.

As of 1:40 am EST/10:40 pm PST:
As we continue to watch California’s results trickle in, there are some silver linings to report. Arizona State Sen. Tim Bee (R-Tucson) lost his congressional race against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, 55% to 43%, with 73% of precincts reporting. Bee is the guy responsible for casting the crucial sixteenth vote which put Prop 102 onto the Arizona ballot. His political career is now, fittingly, over.

And perennial Federal Marriage Amendment sponsor Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) has lost her bid for re-election. With 67% of precincts reporting, Betsy Markey is thumping her 57% to 42%.

As of 1:20 am EST/10:20 pm PST:
The web site for California’s results is extremely slow right now. It’s been slow all evening, but right now I’m really having a hard time getting the results to come up.

As of 12:40 am EST/9:40 pm PST:
I’m back home now, keeping an eye on Arizona and California. It looks like Arkansas and Arizona are lost. I can however take consolation that Pima County (Tucson), my home, has stayed true to its better nature and is trending against Prop 102. California and Florida are still too close to call, although I think we’ll be able to call Florida soon, unfortunately.

Andrew Sullivan just linked to this post as the place to track results for these stupid initiatives. Wish the results were a little less depressing. It’s not going to completely spoil the excitement of Obama’s victory, but it sure does hurt.

Plan B? Well there will certainly be a challenge to Prop 8 on the grounds that it is a revision rather than an amendment to the constitution (thus not something that can be decided by initiative, IIRC). If this kind of challenge is successful, I’m sure we’ll hear more about “activist judges” and so forth and there will undoubtedly be some further nasty efforts to keep us from getting married…

ADJ, are you saying the right will go after banning same-sex marriage in Connecticut? My understanding is that the earliest opportunity they would have to do that is 20 years from now with tonight’s important victory. And in Massachusetts, where I was very involved in the hard-fought battle to protect marriage equality, I’m sure the right has given us up as a totally lost cause. New England is moving towards marriage equality.

“Well there will certainly be a challenge to Prop 8 on the grounds that it is a revision…”

Give it up already. This should serve as a wake up call to gays to stop trying to subvert the democratic process via an activist judiciary. If you want gay “marriage” then you need to pass an amendment; you are not entitled to it.

Incidentally, I look forward to the recall of Ron George and his three stooges.

AJD-Leonard Link has a good article here reviewing a challenge that was made to Prop 8 back in June. The CA Supreme Court denied the petition in July, but left open the possibility of the challenge being refiled after the election.

Quoting Link, the argument is that “because of the significant impact that passage of this initiative would have on fundamental rights and equality guarantees of the California Constitution…” Prop 8 “… is really a revision, not a simple amendment. Under California constitutional procedures, the Constitution may be amended by the popular initiative process, but may not be revised through that process.”

Please take that route werdna. It will only serve to hasten the recall of Ron George and his three stooges as well as highlighting the fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-republican character of the gay lobby.

Ed, my point was that New England isn’t a bellwether region like California is. Even if same-sex marriage remains legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts, it’ll probably remain confined to those states. Meanwhile, there will be attacks on gay rights nationwide.

I really had a bad feeling that Prop. 8 would pass. I know it’s technically too early to tell, but I’m looking at the electoral map at LATimes.com, and we’re not doing too well. We’re even losing in Los Angeles.

I really blame the gay rights movement almost as much as the religious right. Basically, we’ve mostly allowed the religious right to define the terms of the debate, so essentially everything we did was just in reaction to their outrageous claims.

I’ve always thought we should act as though we could wake up tomorrow and find sodomy laws back on the books. That’s not to say it would happen like that, but we still need to fight for our rights, but there seems to be this notion that it’s enough to just lobby and vote for them.

It’s easy to forget that a lot of the anti-gay activists today are the sorts of people who supported laws in Colorado and Oregon back in the 90s that would have explicitly made gay people second-class citizens. I think that when the Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s Amendment 2, it didn’t make the religious right think “Well, maybe we should be nicer to those LGBT folk” — rather, it made them think “If we want to get rid of the faggots, we’ll have to do it one step at a time.”

I have to be in New York for at least a year, but I think I’m going to start looking for jobs in Canada if I wake up tomorrow and the worst of my fears is confirmed.

I’ve been looking at the county-by-county breakdown, and luckily all the counties with large populations seem to be voting no, and aren’t even halfway counted yet. So I think that by numbers alone 8 will be defeated, albeit barely.

*sigh* This election is a mixed bag. I have a hard time feeling incredibly excited about the results of the election when so many are about to lose rights and benefits. It will be effectively impossible to remove this amendment from Florida’s constitution by another ballot initiative; we essentially have to hope for something to happen on the national level.

NO ON 8 should have done more to reach out to the African American community. Obama really should have said more. I can’t help but think if Clinton had won the nomination, we would be in bed now and Prop 8 would be defeated.

My opinion is that “no on 8” had a very difficult battle on its hands. It’s unfortunate that there was a ballot initiative so soon after marriage became legal. My experience in working on marriage equality in MA was the longer the fight went on, the more people got used to the idea of same-sex marriage.

I’ve been crunching some numbers, using country returns to extrapolate the votes still uncounted…I don’t think we can do it. There just aren’t enough votes left in pro-gay counties. Without big, big internal changes in Los Angeles, San Bernadino, and San Diego, this is looking quite bad…

We’re running out of precincts…the margin for Yes has been steady at just over 300,000…the outstanding precincts in LA, San Bernadino, San Diego, and Santa Clara will all have to break very, very hard for No to have any shot at this thing…I just don’t see it happening. Damn, damn, damn.

Yeah, it looks grim for this year. Still, the margin is a lot closer than Prop 22 was and tighter than the early returns suggested it would be.

My husband and I were talking the other night about how when we were radical queers back in the early ’90s we never seriously imagined we’d be able to marry in the US. Now we have a legal marriage certificate from the State of California. It’s amazing how far we’ve gotten already. This is discouraging and there’s a lot of work left to do, but let’s not lose hope.

Or something really stupid like that. Getting out the vote for Obama, registering new voters for the Democratic party out of those minority groups which were previously marginalized, both activities have resulted in creating many new voters who, while for Obama, were likely to be against marriage for gays and lesbians. At least that will be the claim of some of those more libertarian/conservative, LCR-type gays.

Then there will be those who blatantly wish to take away all aspects of our rights who will be crowing over this. They are those who have used an appeal to a supposed god for these last several millenia to denounce such as us for whom we should find to love. They are those who have denied us our full measure of joy in our lives for too long.

I thought I was seeing a bright shining star of hope, and yet now there seems not to even exist the glimmer from a moonless pond at midnight. I am getting old, been ill, and this fight no longer seems to be winnable in my lifetime (whatever that may be). Yes, it is depressing, mostly because half of me seems to want to believe the idea that the methodology for an Obama win is the reason for our demise on Florida Amendment 2, Arizona Proposition 102, and California Proposition 8. The other half is repulsed by the almost racist interpretation that must engender.

But the high I felt listening to Obama’s speech in Grant Park has been replaced by the thought that I would rather had not heard of Barack Obama or the ‘audacity of hope.’ Bittersweet doesn’t describe the sourness I now feel.

*am crying in NC*
Keep fighting them, California! Can we organize some sort of boycott? This is just dispicable. How the citizens of any state can vote to take rights away from their neighbors is beyond me – how can people do this?

On the bright side:
– Sure it may not have won but take into account that the amendemnt passed in other states with about 85% voting Yes in many other states.
– The younger age group( in exit polls )seemed to be highly in opposition to the amendment.
– OBAMA WON! Which means that there is a better platform for gay rights(although not marriage). One step a time?

BTW what hapenned with Proposition K?

In order to continue the fight we do need to target the possible why’s of us losing in california:
– In exit polls african americans seemed to OVERWHELMINGLY vote yes in the proposition. Specially the males(with almost 90%).
– Unless those voting had a clear moral distinction between Prop K and Prop 8, it may have influenced to just condemn both.
– There is still much peope do NOT know about the reality of gay families or life. Hell, my father was condemning gay marriage on the grounds that those that those who are raised in gay families turn gay.
– Religion will ALWAYS be an obstacle(look at Russia/Middle East) more than a means to help gay ppl have rights. So targetting that, cautiously, may help.

Here in Ireland I have been following both the presidential election and the various state constitutional amendments – and I have to say that, despite the initial joy I felt at learning of Obama’s win that I am totally depressed by the results in California and your other states.

My husband is transgendered, nearing transition, so – despite myself being straight – within a few years I will be in a same sex marriage. I regularly follow the posts here and on G-A-Y and Pam Spaulding’s pages and I just wanted to express my sympathy and respect for all that you do for gay rights.

My partner doesn’t understand my feelings as she is obviously more invested in LGBT issues in Ireland and Europe, but I just feel gutted.

I’m very upset with Florida voters. Amendment 2 is just a bad, deliberately vague piece of crummy legislation. All the major newspapers agreed. But it came wrapped in fear of gays. Florida voters couldn’t see beyond it.

“How the citizens of any state can vote to take rights away from their neighbors is beyond me – how can people do this?”

Liv, no offense to you, but that pretty much sums up what’s wrong with gay activism today.

How could they vote to take away rights? I’ll tell you how: It’s because they hate us. They’ve always hated us. And they’ll continue hating us by wide enough margins that we’ll still have to fight tooth and nail just to get a minimal amount of respect in this country for years, if not decades to come.

That’s why despite all of No On 8’s appeals to fairness and equality, despite the obvious fact that Yes On 8 was lying, Yes On 8’s deplorable behavior and the obvious viciousness of trying to make officiation of same-sex marriages legally equivalent to banning guns and detaining peaceful protesters, the amendment is still poised to win.

The sooner we realize that they hate us and start to act accordingly, the better.

Dave, while there’s merit to what you’re saying (convincing people that we’re not scary deviants is an important part of the struggle) you’re crazy if you think we’re not going to use the courts to achieve equality as well. It’s not either/or, we’ll do both.

Brown v. Board of Education, Perez v. Sharp (also a 4-3 decision of the CA Supreme Court), Loving v. Virginia, Lawrence v. Texas… All important court decisions which overturned the “will of the people.” Are you going to argue that the activists who pursued these cases were wrong to do so? Did those decisions set the causes back or did they establish important precedents which improved countless people’s lives?

If Prop 8 is unconstitutional, then it’s appropriate for the CA Supreme Court (or even SCOTUS) to overturn it. If it isn’t, then they won’t.

There’s nothing undemocratic about using the courts to advance our cause. The people who have been complaining about “judicial activists” simply don’t like particular decisions and either don’t understand or don’t care to understand the way our system of government works.

My feelings are vacillating between anger and hurt. In spite of what many have expressed about what the future brings, the last vestiges of hope has evaporated from me. Not in my lifetime will I be equal. The only hope that remains is for another generation.

Iâ€™m very sad that we lost. It was about what I expected, but for me personally, worse than I thought it would be.

I do have one thoughtâ€“ something I wrote in early September in an editorial that appeared in the BAR.

I had asked Mark Leno personally if they were going to do the liberal tolerance-equal rights strategy, pointing out that it had never worked before (except in AZâ€“ once), or if they were going to show actual gay people, actual families, gay people attending churchâ€“ you know, reality. He said that the focus groups had indicated that liberal tolerance was the way to go. I made the same point to HRCâ€™s Marty Rouse at a fundraiser, and he repeated Lenoâ€™s line.

I didnâ€™t work much with No on 8 because of their stated approach and because they seemed totally uninterested in having a speakersâ€™ bureau to reach out to community groups and churches. Phone banking is what they were interested in and wanted volunteers for, not personal contact with real voters. (I tried phone banking once, but hated every minute of it. It seemed flat-out WRONG). Stuff of value to political operatives in their world, but totally divorced (in my opinion) from the real world. I did attend one training directed at churches, where in we were told NOT to use words like prejudice, children, gay marriage, religion, and so onâ€“ you know, reality. We were told that the pro.8 people had â€œco-optedâ€ the issue of children. It was no longer ours to use.

I heard this with disbelief. I gave the campaign money (including FL and AZ), though I did it to show commitment, not because I believed in the approach. I raised a bunch of money, I even gave them some of my time, but I put more energy into Marriage Equality USA, and doing what I could do myself.

Though this political approach has merit, it is very troubling to me. It smells uncomfortably of the closet, which I have long maintained is the real enemy, not the Radical Right. It tells us to be invisible, not to talk about our lives and the REAL issues we face, lest we offend some undecided voter who needs to be manipulated into doing the right thing.

It avoids the larger issue of anti-gay prejudice, an apparently invisible 800 pound lavender gorilla. Research and experience show that people who know gay people tend not to vote against them. If we do not show gay people, we remain a faceless, menacing other, instead of friend, neighbor, or family. It is easy to vote against someone who is invisible.

And we were quite invisible.

I know that the California battle was important, and that we will be back. Itâ€™s not over. But I will say this much about any future campaign:

If it is going to be this type of campaign againâ€“ focus groups, polling, phone banking, and irrelevant ads that look good on a political resume but are useless in swaying peopleâ€“ donâ€™t expect one dime of my money, one minute of my time, one iota of my energy.

I am angry as hell about this. I feel betrayed by our leaders. The handwriting was on the wall that a new approach was needed, and they preferred to immerse themselves in their political culture and operatives rather than show the simple facts of our lives.

And the resultâ€“ more people thought that the standard of living of animals raised for food was more important than the civil rights and families of their fellow Americans.

Those folks who are voting “correctly” on Prop 8 are spot on…they are not hating folks they are loving marriage…marriage as define as one man with one woman…that is the BIBLICAL definition of marriage. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one. Genesis!!! Doesn’t say anything about a man leave his daddy and daddy or mommy and mommy. A man shall leave his father and mother and unite with his wife.
Any PERVERSION of that model is wrong…it’s sinful and the good people of California are voting correctly.

The only way to win in the long term is to vanquish the religious right. As I said before, with all the dishonesty and immorality the Yes On 8 put into this campaign, it’ll will probably be to the 2000s what the Scopes trial was to the 1920s. We just need an H.L. Mencken of our own to articulate the new era.

And I was totally serious about starting a campaign to have San Francisco become the 51st state, and maybe have Marin County join in, too.

If not that, then maybe try working to mandate comprehensive sex-ed in all schools and overturn the opt-out clause. Might as well make the Prop. 8 people’s nightmares come true, despite their best efforts.

You can only properly use the courts when there is a statutory or constitutional principle at issue. The question of same-sex marriage is one of what marriage properly means and is. This is an ethical decision that belongs to the legislature or the people.

For people who oppose same-sex marriage the marital relationship is both the proper social norm for responsible procreation and a symbol of the mutually arising nature of male and female. (The latter is classic mythic thinking; when people go on about their religion’s view of marriage they are engaged in mythic thinking, albeit stereotyped by the forms of their own cult.)

Proponents of same-sex marriage view marriage differently, of course.

Such conflicts are, in a democratic nation, properly by convincing your fellow citizens.

The 14th amendment cases you mention do not bear on this issue; the 14th amendment is about not making arbitrary distinctions between individuals. It says nothing about making distinctions concerning actions.

“The people who have been complaining about â€œjudicial activistsâ€ simply donâ€™t like particular decisions and either donâ€™t understand or donâ€™t care to understand the way our system of government works.”

This is simply wrong.

B. Daniel Blatt (aka Gay Patriot West) who blogs at http://www.gaypatriot.net asked a commenter with a similar view if he thought that the Dred Scott decision never happened.

I can similarly ask if you hadn’t noticed the arguments over Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, the Miranda decision …. I could go on all day.

Concern about courts overreaching their authority is not new and not confined to the concerns of the Christian Right.

Stop assuming — without evidence — that there are no intelligent, informed, and sincere believers in judicial restraint.

Like all religious bigots, you take that passage out of context. The context of Jesus’s saying comes from the Pharisee’s asking a specific question. They asked “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.

Then Jesus goes on to teach that a bond made before God must be taken seriously and for life…something which a vast number of Evangelicals ignore.

But Jesus doesn’t preclude the bond made by same-sex couples in this passage (found in all 3 synoptic Gospels). He simply answers the question that was posed to him.

By the way, William, Jesus was on the side of the persecuted. Do you really think you are living by his example when you come here to gloat over the inequality of others. People like you and Frank Shubert have to repeat over and over that this “isn’t about hate”, but that’s simply you attempting to forgive yourselves. It is not up to you to forgive yourselves, it is up to us and God to forgive you. And you can’t coerce that forgiveness no matter how you hard you claim you are only persecuting the lesbian and gay community out of “love”.

What’s more, you put your interpretation of the Scripture above the rights of other Americans. That is simply treason to the American ideal of Equality and Justice.

“If Prop 8 is unconstitutional, then itâ€™s appropriate for the CA Supreme Court (or even SCOTUS) to overturn it. If it isnâ€™t, then they wonâ€™t.”

If Ron George and the other members of the court who imposed gay marriage on CA entertain the idea of putting themselves above what is clearly now part of the CA constitution, then they will be recalled as surely as Rose Bird was recalled in the 80’s.

Ostiarius blathered: If Ron George and the other members of the court who imposed gay marriage on CA entertain the idea of putting themselves above what is clearly now part of the CA constitution, then they will be recalled as surely as Rose Bird was recalled in the 80â€™s.

William said:
“Those folks who are voting â€œcorrectlyâ€ on Prop 8 are spot onâ€¦they are not hating folks they are loving marriageâ€¦marriage as define as one man with one womanâ€¦that is the BIBLICAL definition of marriage. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one. Genesis!!! Doesnâ€™t say anything about a man leave his daddy and daddy or mommy and mommy. A man shall leave his father and mother and unite with his wife.
Any PERVERSION of that model is wrongâ€¦itâ€™s sinful and the good people of California are voting correctly.”

If the issue of religion is as relevant here in Puerto Rico(US territory) as it is in California then, convincing other people in california of same sex marriage will undoubtedly mean that you need to address religion. Targetting large concentrations of republicans also has to be on the list. It was more than clear through the pollings that THEY(the republicans, in unison with afro-americans) are the ones responsible for the passing of the amendments.

We need to think of some ways to target the literal interpretation, through faith, that demeans/forbids the rights of gays and lesbians.

Albeit this is not the only reason, as there is bigotry, tradition and simple repulsion, to homosexuals, once religion embraces gays and lesbians… it can be a very valuable asset to progress gay rights. Although, i don’t see this happening anytime soon…

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